Geolocation
Airwars assessment
Seven named civilians were killed and dozens more were wounded, including a child, by alleged Russian and Syrian regime airstrikes on Douma City in Eastern Ghouta.
According to sources the city was one of many subjected to “heavy artillery shelling” and “aerial bombardment” that week. @syriahadath, specified the use of cluster bombs.
One of those killed was a senior commander of The Army of Islam and according to Jaish al-Islam, was the operations officer of the second brigade.
Media activist Alaeddin Kurdi told ARA News that “for the fourth day in a row, the Syrian warplanes launched fierce and intensive raids targeting civilians and infrastructure, and the warplanes are still flying in the eastern Ghouta area.”
Local sources were conflicted over who was responsible for the airstrikes. While the Local Coordination Committee of Syria identified Russian warplanes as responsible for the airstrikes, other sources, including Syrian Network for Human Rights, blamed Syrian regime planes for the casualties. However, the majority of sources did not identify a culprit and instead only identified the planes as belonging to an air force.
According to the Local Coordination Committee of Syria, the airstrikes struck the neighbourhoods, the markets, and mosques of Eastern Ghouta with long-range thermobaric missiles.
A video posted by Doum showed the shell of the missiles that crashed through multiple buildings, which were significantly larger than the average human height. In addition, graphic images of those killed were included in the video, including two young men that were covered in blood. Another video posted by the Syrian Civil Defence showed an ambulance being loaded with a child who had been injured by strikes.
The local time of the incident is unknown.
The victims were named as:
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the city of Douma (دوما), for which the generic coordinates are: 33.5714804, 36.4033699. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.
Summary
Sources (18) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (5) [ collapse]
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Remnants of a missile fired on Douma, 8th November 2016. (via @media_centerfr)
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This media contains graphic content. Click to unblur.
Image of a civilian killed in an alleged Russian and Syrian regime raid on Douma, 8th November 2016. (via @SCDrifdimashq)
Russian Military Assessment:
Original strike reports
Russia has not reported any specific strikes between November 1st – 30th 2016.
On 6 January 2017, Russia, however, reported: “Since November 8, 2016, the aircraft carrier group of the Northern Fleet consisting of the heavy aircraft carrying cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov, the heavy nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, the large ASW ship Severomorsk, as well as auxiliary vessels of the Black Sea Fleet, has been fulfilling counterterrorist missions on the territory of Syria”, adding that ”in the course of two months of their participation in the combat actions, naval aviation pilots have carried out 420 combat sorties, 117 of them were night ones”.